There’s a video linked in the article showing a couch & TV, t-shirts and other apparel, and a even wall dedicated to selling video games.
On the one hand, I admire that Gamestop has tried repeatedly to reinvent themselves knowing that gaming is moving towards digital distribution. Even if they’ve been unsuccessful, it shows they aren’t oblivious and are at least trying something.
On the other hand, their quotas, sales tactics, and definition of “new” are awful. Plus there’s no way a design like this works in the strip mall location closest to me (too narrow) and I’m sure that will be a common scenario when they roll out.
I see several glorious CRT TVs. Are they selling vintage consoles/games now?
Maybe the people who are responsible for the resurgence of vinyl will propel us back to the CRT TV days!
I like the retro gaming and community area. They’re trying to pull back old people like me. It could work.
They have been for a few years now, mostly relegated to online with a smattering of physical stores. Half the time if you ask an employee about it in a store that doesn’t carry them you get a blank stare.
Damn. And here I just bought my first OLED.
And now all Gamestop stores in Denmark closes - Its blockbuster all over again. To be fair though - they DID try to do a few things, like having trading cards, mugst, t-shirts and merchandise related to gaming, but thats it.
Oh - is that maybe “GAME” instead, that took over some of Gamestops shops? Anyways - Its the end for that particular chain in Denmark now. 33 shops in Denmark, and around 200 in all, all across Europe.
I didn’t think GAME had outlets outside of the UK and Spain, but maybe that changed with the recent restructuring and buyout.
If Valve opened a Steam store I might visit every once in a while.
I walked by the GameStop at the Mall of America the other day and right below the big front-and-center GameStop neon was a nearly as large “POP CULTURE” neon.
Watch the ship sink in real time!
I hope Gamestop is still around when the next gen consoles are released so I can trade in my PS4 Pro and One X for the new consoles.
That’s what they’re like in Canada now.
They changed the name from EB Games to EB X, and 80% of the store is no longer games.
I went to our local mall (which I hadn’t been to in a year) with friends and none of us could find the old game store. We thought it closed until we checked the map thingy. All of us walked right past it several times.
As is typical, I thought they overstated some things, though there are things that are true, certainly.
While many people cling to the erroneous belief that new games aren’t important to Gamestop, the issue lows in the fact that they got burned so badly on a few releases years ago (too much stock) that they began to lean to heavily into preorders for allocations. It’s fine if they want to run with a just in time sort of philosophy, but they never developed a distribution infrastructure to support that, leading to the stupid scenario where a walk-in can’t get what they want, but Walmart has 50 copies.
Only miserable if you don’t compare it to the graveyard feel of the remaining Sears.
Seriously though, I go to a local Gamestop sometimes. The last time I went in there for a game ,they gave me one of those open copies sold as a new one and… boy they were lucky I still intended to frequent them for games and collectibles. Also, standing behind them while they explain 20 different ways someone can use their trade in points or why they have to use the tablet instead of the register just turns my buying experience into a 15+ minute waste of time. Just let me buy my stuff and go.
The employees though are generally nice.
Unless it’s a an exclusive copy. Blah.
I went to Gamestop for the first time in about 7 years recently. They were woefully out of stock, their used games were all of the “no real box so here’s a cheap printed Gamestop logo instead” and hilariously overpriced for the few that they did have of major releases, and most of the store was dominated by giant, tottering piles of overpriced LOOKAMEE IMMA BIG OL NERD YEEEE tchotchkes. The one guy there was busy helping a family navigate some kind of complicated transaction for the 15 minutes I felt like waiting around before getting bored and peacing out.
I know there are some who mourn the loss of in-person retail and/or think its death knell spells the end of Gaming As We Know It, but shit, if they wanna stick around, the least they could do would be to not suck 100% of all fucks at actually having and selling retail items in-person.
This is probably their trade-in, members system that involved used games and all that nonsense that takes forever and has everyone waiting round just to buy stuff.
There was something warm about going to a place where you ran into locals with similar interests and hearing or even being a part of some spontaneous discussion. The ticket taker and our group at the local theater has an impromptu discussion because were were waiting for another member. There whole let’s redo the store approach so walking into one Gamestop feels like walking into another didn’t really fix the problem which is the experience there just isn’t that good.